Phase Diagram and Entanglement of two interacting topological Kitaev chains

TL;DR

This paper explores the phase diagram and entanglement properties of two coupled topological Kitaev chains, revealing various topological, Mott, and critical phases influenced by interactions and chemical potentials.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the phase diagram of coupled Kitaev chains, identifying new phases and quantum critical points using analytical and numerical methods.

Findings

Existence of a topological phase with four Majorana fermions

Identification of Mott phases with Ising magnetic order at strong interactions

Confirmation of quantum critical points belonging to the 2D Ising universality class

Abstract

A superconducting wire described by a p-wave pairing and a Kitaev Hamiltonian exhibits Majorana fermions at its edges and is topologically protected by symmetry. We consider two Kitaev wires (chains) coupled by a Coulomb type interaction and study the complete phase diagram using analytical and numerical techniques. A topological superconducting phase with four Majorana fermions occurs until moderate interactions between chains. For large interactions, both repulsive and attractive, by analogy with the Hubbard model, we identify Mott phases with Ising type magnetic order. For repulsive interactions, the Ising antiferromagnetic order favors the occurrence of orbital currents spontaneously breaking time-reversal symmetry. By strongly varying the chemical potentials of the two chains, quantum phase transitions towards fully polarized (empty or full) fermionic chains occur. In the Kitaev model, the quantum critical point separating the topological superconducting phase and the polarized phase belongs to the universality class of the critical Ising model in two dimensions. When increasing the Coulomb interaction between chains, then we identify an additional phase corresponding to two critical Ising theories (or two chains of Majorana fermions). We confirm the existence of such a phase from exact mappings and from the concept of bipartite fluctuations. We show the existence of negative logarithmic corrections in the bipartite fluctuations, as a reminiscence of the quantum critical point in the Kitaev model. Other entanglement probes such as bipartite entropy and entanglement spectrum are also used to characterize the phase diagram. The limit of large interactions can be reached in an equivalent setup of ultra-cold atoms and Josephson junctions.